1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a holding apparatus, and more particularly, to a holding apparatus applied for holding a microfluidic device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The advancement of micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) technology has brought various kinds of microfluidic devices into presence. In biological test, microfluidic devices made of poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) platform and substrate, where biological detection materials such as antibody or nano gold are placed, allow cell-size objects to pass through so as to perform processing, reacting, or analyzing detection of the fluidic samples.
However, such micrometer-scale microfluidic platform has a high requirement for the test environment. If the microfluidic device is placed out of level or the clamping force is not uniformly exerted on the microfluidic device, fluids in each passway may have different flow rate, not to mention the clogging. For example, manual needle insertion is common in the practice of prior art, which directly inserts a needle-like metal or plastic inlet tube and outlet tube into the inlet and the outlet of the microfluidic device, the surface friction and interference between the tubes and the inlet/outlet of the microfluidic device are the key factors that ensure the attachment and no leaking of fluid should happen. However, doing the insertion and maintaining the tubes at where they should be in a manual way has poor reliability and is apt to loose the inlet tube or the outlet tube. It is also unable to keep perfect seal between tubes and the inlet/outlet of the microfluidic device, or even clogging caused by the deformation of the microfluidic device could happen due to excessive exertion of force onto a part of a chip on microfluidic device.
Adhesion is also available in the market to combine the inlet tube and the outlet tube with the inlet/outlet of the microfluidic device, which also takes a great deal of preparation and problem of controlling the contact pressure of the inlet and the outlet exists.
It is therefore an important issue to keep the level of the microfluidic device and exert even and proper clamping force thereto so that external pipes can be seamlessly attached to the microfluidic device with sufficient connection pressure between the tubes and the inlet/outlet and no deformation due to external forces should happen on microfluidic device.